It seems like a lot of people are happy with rackspace.com dedicated hosting. I am interesting in signing up for their service, but I find their SLA's uptime terms somewhat disturbing:

"Rackspace guarantees that the network will be available 99.999% of the time in a given month (no more than 24 seconds downtime per month), excluding scheduled maintenance. After 24 seconds, Rackspace will refund the customer 5% of the monthly fee for each 30 minutes of downtime (up to 100% of customer's monthly fee)."

Don't any of their customers find the 5% compensation scheme a little insulting? My website is down for 10 HOURS before they will give me my money back?

How has their uptime been in reality?

Lastly, are there any caveats or warnings regarding rackspace.com that you would offer a potential customer?

Apparently 100%:

http://www.datacenterwire.com/wmview.php?ArtID=611

Of course individual server uptime probably varies.

From their website:

http://www.rackspace.com/infrastructure/sla/sla.php?ctid=0099-99999

The 100% uptime only applies to their network. Faulty hardware is different. As far as the SLA, that is slightly better than what most providers give. If you think about it, why should a provider refund you for a full month, when your site is only down a for a few hours? In this case, the site has to be down for 10 hours before you get a months refund, which seems pretty reasonable.

umm rackspace and the word downtime don't go together

haha - amusing :)

if you want to see an insulting SLA - look at e-servers.biz ;)

AFAIK, rackspace have one of the most generous SLA's available.

If you think about it, why should a provider refund you for a full month, when your site is only down a for a few hours? In this case, the site has to be down for 10 hours before you get a months refund, which seems pretty reasonable.
Well, take for example a host which was up 99% of the time in a given month. Would that be worth 99% of the cost of the hosting account? Probably not because the 1% of downtime would make your business look really bad to your customers and would scare potential customers away. Likewise a car which stopped running 1% of the time when you were on the freeway would probably not be worth 99% of the value of a new car which ran 99.999% of the time to the owner. 10 hours seems like a long time for a "premium-priced" host.

Well,

I think their refunds are reasonable and not insulting.

I ever saw a webhost that guaranteed 99.9% uptime,if not you get a refund

In the small "characters" i've read this:


"The total of a refund due to downtime over 0.05% can never be more than 5% of the monthly price"

One issue with rackspace is that they exclude "planned maintainance" from their uptime calculation; for small companies that could be a problem, since having warning of downtime is only useful if you can afford to offload the traffic to a different server.

One issue with rackspace is that they exclude "planned maintainance" from their uptime calculation

You're right, they're probably like every host when it comes to excluding planned maintenance. But this last one on, I believe the 7th, went off without a hiccup.

Like Mrs. Jenkins would say...Aint nobody better talk bad about my Rackspace!

Originally posted by panopticon

Likewise a car which stopped running 1% of the time when you were on the freeway would probably not be worth 99% of the value of a new car which ran 99.999% of the time to the owner. 10 hours seems like a long time for a "premium-priced" host.

Rackspace is mid-tier. Digex, Conxion, and others are "premium-priced". Their SLAs are no better. The truth is, networks fail, problems happen. A host that wants to stay in business can't offer outrageous SLAs.

Your car comparison is pretty interesting: What car manufacturer gives you an SLA when their car breaks down? Even if that car is crucial to your business? Sure, they will fix it for free, but they are not going to credit you part of your payment for that month.

Rackspace has a great SLA -- you have to compare it to the rest of the industry, not to what you want. If their SLA is better than most of the industry, that is a good thing.

Don't mix up rackspace & rackshack - two VERY different things.

Originally posted by iseletsk
Don't mix up rackspace & rackshack - two VERY different things.

Doh! Fixed, thanks!!

Rackspace is very wonderful company. I seen press release on there web site which said they had 100% uptime since last 1 year and that is very good thing about them.

By now going on there SLA, I can see there past records which appears to be very clean and there network is truly redundant.
:)

I'm sorry, but I've just got to reply to this thread since I like to reply to all Rackspace.com threads :). Their SLA is probably the best one out there, other than the one that Conxion provides, but Conxion is not really for a hosting company that you would use for hosting general company websites etc, unless you're as big as Microsoft. Other companies may offer the same uptime gurantee, or higher (100%), but do they ever keep their promise?

The one thing that I've just noticed is that it's 99.999% uptime guarantee, which they say is no more than 24 seconds per month. But looking back at a really old thread, I found this:

If it is up... Then it is down... per year

90% - 876 hours
95% - 438 hours
99% - 87 hours, 36 minutes
99.9% - 8 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds
99.99% - 52 minutes, 33.6 seconds
99.999% - 5 minutes, 15.36 seconds
99.9999% - 31.68 secondsSo does anyone know how long 99.999% really is and if the list above is correct?

With the quality of hardware that Rackspace uses, it's very rare that you get downtime due to hardware problems. They also keep scheduled downtimes to a minimum. To conlcude... Rackspace.com is the place to get the best uptime possible for your website, even inlcuding any downtimes that are not included in the SLA.

Lol... and no, I don't work for Rackspace.com, I just think highly of them since I've been a customer for over 8 months now and they have been great, compared to other dedicated server providers that I've used in the past.

Alan

Originally posted by Wick Ness
"Rackspace guarantees that the network will be available 99.999% of the time in a given month (no more than 24 seconds downtime per month), excluding scheduled maintenance. After 24 seconds, Rackspace will refund the customer 5% of the monthly fee for each 30 minutes of downtime (up to 100% of customer's monthly fee)."

Does this mean they have to be down 30 minutes and 24 seconds before they will issue a credit?

Originally posted by JG
Does this mean they have to be down 30 minutes and 24 seconds before they will issue a credit?

I think it means that you get a 5% credit if they are down for between 24 seconds and 30 minutes and 24 seconds, a 10% credit if they are down for between 30 minutes and 24 seconds and one hour and 24 seconds, etc.

5% every 30 mins is pretty good, expecially if you have one of their higher end servers (up round $2,000)

In regards to your original question, we have been with them going on 2 years now. The only time our servers come down, is if we choose to reboot them.

Ive had 0 problems with Rackspace in the time that I have dealt with them.

RackSpace is basically the top of the line managed hosting provider. They provide great support and a great network, the only complaint I ever hear about them is their pricing. We are modeling rackfast after them as a company because we believe they are the best of their breed currently.

-Brendan

Their pricing in certain way is steep although there are always options for negotiation with them, especialy if its a win-win scenario in what you are trying to achieve. Despite their pricing on certain things, it's their reliability and support that nullifies the question on price since it's certainly better to know that there is sufficient infrastructure in place to rely upon, thus translating to a better offering on the basis of infrastructure alone.